The Buena Vista Social Club Pays a Visit

A SCANNER DARKLY.

Look closely below the right tail-light. You’re starting to see these new square bar codes everywhere. Their design makes them easier to capture with a portable scanner, such as a smart phone. It only makes sense that they would now show up on vehicles.

Think about how old-school it is for cops to have to pull up close enough to read off a license plate into the radio Adam-12 style: “Alpha Charlie Diamond, One, Four, Six. Tags are current. Copy?” when instead they could convey all the information with a quick scan of the bar code.

The Palm Tree and the Pine.

A uniquely Californian pairing. I photograph them together every chance I get.

Easter Island Style

At this strip mall on the edge of East San Jose, I looked up at these trees and realized I was looking at the gangsta lean silhouette of the mysterious Easter Island statues.

Note the white pinprick of the half-moon (top-center).

East San Jose Lavanderia.

Lake Merritt

Alameda

Magic Hour in San Jose.

As the entire street was engulfed in deepening shadows, this one house on the end seemed to light up.

Ford Falcon Ranchero. San Jose.

This was my last stop of the day on Thursday. I had never seen anything like this Falcon Ranchero before. It was good light for photography, but the old guys on the block were all gathered at the corner. I knew they would be watching me, so I settled for these two furtive shots from across the street.

South of Market, Halloween morning.Hulked out ruins from the previous millennium.East San JoseSweet decal. Oakland.

Diamond & Bosworth in SF.

After surfacing at Glen Park BART, I managed to snap a shot of this road machine before it rolled through the intersection on four stout tires, purring contentedly. The inadvertent photographing of the yellow light and the left turn in progress of the six-wheel flatbed going through the crosswalk nicely captures the fluidity of the moment.

Two kinds of orange in Alameda.The basic blue retro license plate boldly complements the orangeness of the truck.

Did you know that orange didn’t exist until the 1500s?

Well, that’s not exactly true, that’s just when the word became part of the English language. “Orange” originally described the fruit, not the color, by the way. It came to England along a linguistic path that originated in Sanskrit as the word “naranga,” then went through Persian, Arabic, Spanish, and French before being adapted by the English as “orange.”

From Sanskrit right up through Spanish, the word was “naranja”. Now if you’re a 1500s Englishmen and you’re beholding a specimen of this citrus fruit you’d call it “a naranja,” which would eventually become streamlined to your English-speaking ears as “an aranja,” or “an orange.” So that’s why “orange” didn’t exist until the 1500s, and why nothing rhymes with it.

Well then, did this color even exist on the English palette before then?

I was in Greater Cleveland over the past weekend visiting family, and I saw something I’d never seen before.

It’s 1957’s car of the future, the Ford Edsel.

I am not certain what year or model this car is, but it has to be over a half-century old. Though I kept a respectful distance while taking these photographs, from where I stood the car didn’t appear to be restored in any particular way. It had modern Tennessee plates and seemed to just be parked there, rather than stranded or on display.

Closeup of the EDSEL lettering.

It’s an Edsel alright.

The front grill stares you down with a fierce expression, while the rear taillights gaze at you softly.

If you stare long enough, it will wink.

The car as it first appeared to me, in the rear of the parking lot, with its tail end facing out at the street.